


polyrhythm

by Euludey



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Civil War Team Captain America, Civil War Team Iron Man, Classical Music, Ficlet, Friendship, Liszt - Freeform, Multilingual, Music, Music Theory, Musical References, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Other, POV Multiple, Piano, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Slash if you squint, Unreliable Narrator, Violins, draft, neutral, Русский | Russian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 04:08:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16256354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euludey/pseuds/Euludey
Summary: Извиниться / Izvinit'syaInfinitive, imperfective verb.To apologize.______________________A part of a larger work in the making.





	polyrhythm

**Author's Note:**

> Not much spoken apologizing happens. More of an interest check?
> 
> Not Team Iron Man or Team Cap. Both sides are at fault, and this is based on my interpretation of it.
> 
> I only took Russian for around 2 and a half years and only know formal Russian so I apologize if there are grammar mistakes. My English is also not as refined as I wish it to be. I'm trying to code in tooltips, but it's not working.
> 
> Beta: Arowen12

James thinks that he might just regret not apologizing earlier. That by stalling, he’d committed yet another sin atop the weighty mountain settled uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach.

(In the deep recesses of his brain, the Soldier, for all his cold apathy, nods solemnly.)

Because when his hands finally stopped their hesitance and the fragile sound of metal trembling against metal stopped, he begins to regret not trusting Tony.

Not trusting the government was something he do again in a heartbeat; his knowledge of how far Hydra had stuck their slimy tentacles in was more than enough incentive. Not trusting Tony was something he wishes he could take back, should have let the man he’d saw fight to keep peace after Ultron have a chance.

(Should have told him about his parents himself.)

(But then again, you were too afraid and trusted Steve too much.)

Standing there in the doorway, where the metal doors had receded and allowed him access, the soft sound of music that was previously hindered by what must be a soundproof door drifts through the air in an elegant, _delicate_ dance.

F# Major, his mind supplies. The notes are in a quiet triple pianissimo that has him straining to hear them clearly, but he thinks he recognizes the chord progression and the complex texture.

He thinks once upon a time, he was a pianist, or a dancer perhaps. Maybe it was just a mask for a mission, but the intimacy of the sound and the way his hands suddenly itch to move and the fleeting memory of a pas de deux suggests otherwise.

 _Мой маленький паук. Моя добрая Даша_ , he muses, as James steps around the glass debris on the floor and through the heavy smell of ethanol in the air, making his way to closer to the music.

(Another you couldn’t save because you trusted too much and the wrong person, and now HYDRA hangs her head on a plaque for her desertion.)

(It’s always been about trust, hasn’t?) James walks through yet another assuming archway, bare feet grasping the cold linoleum. The music halts in a brief fermata before they continue once more in adante, planning downwards in modulation.

His strides are slow and faltering at times, his heart thumping when the music crescendos quickly. It stutters against his sternum when it trails off and stops, but it is but a 2-beat rest that resumes the lonely, modulating melody of before.

(D-B-G, and then B-G-E it goes. Such a guilty loneliness.)

His breath hitches despite the fact that what remains of programming should have erased such behaviors, but James thinks that perhaps the sight was too astonishing not to.

Situated with back curled over the keys, his head dipped so low that his brown locks brush the gleaming keys and his hands flitting in an elegant, almost spinderly, posture across the notes, Tony was beautiful. The dying light of a waning moon giving into the depths of darkness filters through the pale curtains, illuminating the inky black of the piano and the glittering green bottles at its base.

His heart wrenches as the sight of what they’ve done to the man, but the darker part of him that is usually consumed in an ensnaring numbness starts with a jolt and _wakes_.

James thinks that he should be ashamed for feeling such, but he’s beautiful.

Tony’s beautiful.

(You’ve always known the Soldier was born on the front lines, not in a HYDRA base, haven’t you?)

Glass shards pierce the skin of his soles as he resumed walking (when had he stopped?) but he ignores them in favor of carefully approaching. James would assume by the thick smell of alcohol on Tony’s breath that he should be unconscious by now, but the man was still playing the notes in _allegro moderato_ and still with a crisp accuracy.

James thinks of reaching out to touch Tony’s shoulder, but the escalation into _espressivo molto_ and then into a jarringly fluid _più crescendo_ grips his arm in an unshaking fist and James thinks, what right do I have to stop him?

He listens, entranced, by the next 3 minutes as the music grows from a sombre solitude (of course, _solitude!_ ) into an almost furious matrix of technical difficulty and then returns to the quiet chords of before on a flurry of twinkling scales. The shifts and jumps Tony’s hands make is a dance of its own, and it’s only when the last chord played is not the soft hopefulness he remembers but a hollow, empty sound that James comes back to himself.

He sucks in a breath of air he didn’t realize he had forgotten to take and stares at the brown orbs meeting his, waiting for the light burning in his lungs to fade.

“ _Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude_ ,” his lips whispered. Now that he looks carefully, James notices that the hard grey tinge that he vaguely remembers seeing in Howard’s isn’t there. It’s replaced by a cool silver ring around his iris, the flecks blending in nicely with the warm chocolate of his eyes.

Tony looks like his mother. He was never really Howard’s son, was he?

(“She was my mother.”)

“А-а. Господин Барнс,” Tony greeted. His lips where quirked up in the dazzling media smile that he wore much too frequently, and despite being startled by the man’s near-perfect accent, James couldn’t help but suddenly feel conscious of the repercussions of their actions.

(He wouldn't be fooled like the rest.)

“Джамс,” he said softly with a light incline of his head. Tony blinks for a second or two, but behind the emotionless placebo, he seemed to consider it and agreed with his own tilt of the head, “Джамс.”

He slips off the eloquently designed bench and stand in a welcoming posture. Fake smile was still plastered across Tony’s face as he gestured for James to follow him to a nearby bar. James notes with sadness at the disparity of the bar and the obvious lack in drink as he takes a seat.

“Я не знаю вы нравился классическую музыку,” Tony says as he rounds the counter and brings out a fresh bottle of wine. He pours himself an absurd amount considering the amount already in his blood _must_ be at toxic levels, but the man should have dropped long before and he was still standing.

Tony glances at him questioningly, “Вы хотите пить вино?”

James declines with a small shake of his head, and watches as Tony downs his glass in one go and fills it up again. The man pauses and fixes him with an unwavering stare.

James blinks, “Извините?

“Мой вопрос. Вы не ответил.”

Ah.

“Я- Я думаю, Я раньше был пианист,” James answers. He peers at Tony, “Листа, да?”

He’s returned with another nod. James asks tentatively, “Почему вы выбрал Листа? Почему нет- почему нет кто-то другой, например о Рахманинов?”

“Что вы думаете? Почему?” came Tony’s vague answer. They both understood the rhetoric nature of the question and they knew it.

“Вы можете рассказать мне зачем вы пришли здесь?” Tony asked, all business, his patience for small talk fading away.

“Хочу извиняться,” he responds honestly, in a quiet voice. Tony peers at him through long lashes and the glass of his flute. He sets it down on the starry marble and leans forward, looking James in the eye with an unreadable expression.

“Это были не вы,” the words were clipped and sharp. James watches as the man’s lips twist into a rueful smile, and the way the words were gritted out strikes him like a blow.

(Look at what you’ve done.)

“Что едой ничего не меняет.”

Tony gets a strange look then, but the sight of it settles something that had been boring on both of them for a while, and James thinks that in that moment, both of them could breathe with a little more ease.

“I’ve erred greatly, haven’t I?” Tony asks, mostly to himself. He shifts his weight off his hands and back on his two feet and meets Barnes’s eyes with an easy gaze. His fingers twitch from where they’ve clasped around the neck of the flute and he releases them.

Barnes’s gaze follows him as Tony walks back to the obsidian piano and settles back down on the ornate seat.

“So have I,” the other answers as he too lifts up from his chair and walks over.

Tony shakes his head, “No, don’t speak for Rogers. You’re not his keeper.” He points a finger at the pale white violin presented on a glass shelf, “I assume you play?”

Barnes makes a small nod before pulling on a leather glove and going over and lifting the instrument into a familiar embrace. Tony notes that his posture was perfect, the newly rosined bow held correctly and his left fingers hovering over the right notes on the D-string.

Tony’s lips quirk a little before he sets his hands on the D#5 and D#6 and begins playing the chords softly. As his right hand reaches higher to D#7, James realizes what was expected of him. He straightens himself ever so slightly and starts with an F# in harmony with the rapid jumps Tony’s hands performs with a deadly precision.

James finds himself having to remind himself to focus on accompanying the piece as he watches Tony make a jump 35 half-steps apart and the light glimmer of brilliant, royal sapphire _dances_ at his fingertips.

He thinks back to Siberia and the cold that must have taken so much.

(He’s always saved himself.)

La Campanella has never really been played with the violin in the accompanying role, as it takes the lead in playing Paganini’s piece, but James was determined to allow the brilliance of Tony’s interpretation of Liszt’s _étude_ to shine.

Something _lifts_ off his shoulders as his fingers flew through the numerous double-stops, the fluttering of the strings beneath his fingertips placating a darkness that neither he nor the Soldier had noticed was choking them.

This playing - this _passion_ \- it was intoxicating and entrancing in a way that wormed its way into to the deepest corners of his mind more than HYDRA never could.

He thinks that his therapist would have a migraine at hearing this, but he does not believe this is something he will share.

Perhaps shamelessly, James thought it therapeutic in its own twisted way.

If the code cannot be erased without destroying the vessel, then it must be manipulated and changed, until it had become irreversibly changed.

(Theseus’s ship, you are.)

Here, in the cool breeze of the night with the first trickles of light bathing the hair of a weary man, James’s thoughts are clear.

(He’s never been more content.)

**Author's Note:**

> Мой маленький паук. Моя добрая Даша - My little spider. My kind Dasha.  
> А-а. Господин Барнс - A-ah. Mr. Barnes.  
> Джамс - James.  
> Я не знаю вы нравился классическую музыку. - I didn't know that you liked classical music.  
> Вы хотите пить вино? - You want to drink wine?  
> Извините - Excuse me/Sorry  
> Мой вопрос. Вы не ответил. - My question. You didn't answer.  
> Я- Я думаю, Я раньше был пианист. - I- I think I used to be a pianist.  
> Листа, да? - Liszt, right?  
> Почему вы выбрал Листа? Почему нет- почему нет кто-то другой, например о Рахманинов? - Why did you choose Liszt? Why not- why not someone else, for example/perhaps Rachmaninov?  
> Что вы думаете? Почему? - What do you think? Why?  
> Вы можете рассказать мне зачем вы пришли здесь? - Can you tell me what you're here for?  
> Хочу извиняться - I want to apologize.  
> Это были не вы. - It wasn't you.  
> Что едой ничего не меняет. - That doesn't change anything.
> 
> Please do not fight in the comments or try to impose your opinion on who was right and who isn't. This is neutral.


End file.
